


JayTimBINGO2019: Mythology Week

by meaninglessblah



Series: JayTimBINGO2019 [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Swan Princess (1994) Fusion, Fae!Tim, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Irish!Jason, JayTimBINGO2019, M/M, Minotaur!Jason, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sacrifice!Tim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-30 07:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20093329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meaninglessblah/pseuds/meaninglessblah
Summary: A collection of drabbles and short stories for the JayTim Bingo Challenge 2019. Entries for Mythology Week enclosed!1. "Wings" - Swan Princess AU2. "Fate" - Minotaur & The Labyrinth AU3. "Jealousy" - Fae!Tim & Irish!Jason4. "???" - ???5. "???" - ???





	1. Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of drabbles and short stories for the [JayTimWeek](https://jaytimweek.tumblr.com) Bingo Challenge 2019.  
Prompt: "Wings" - Swan Princess AU

Jason eases his knee down into the mud, feeling the waters of the marsh seep into his britches. He shifts his weight slowly, carefully, waiting as the sludge shifts beneath him and solidifies into an unearthed tree root. The moonlight splits off the glistening silver tip of his crossbow bolt for the barest second as he hoists it, and Jason pauses, awaiting a reaction that doesn’t come. Then he steadily nocks the stirrup into a gnarled twist of age-old root and layers his shoulder against the stock. 

He waits. He can wait for as long as it takes. Can wait until the clouds shift and split and bare the lake before him like a pearl beneath that gaping moon. He’s waited years for this moment, and Jason can afford to wait however many more it takes for him to get his justice. 

The creature slides across the ink of the lake with barely a ripple, intangible in the clouded moonlight. Jason holds his breath and eases forward to get a better glimpse. It traces a route parallel to the shore near where he waits, only the faint trickle of water off its back the indicator of its position. He can make out the shadow of a long and slender neck, arched high over the mottled lake, as if it’s surveying its domain. There’s a streak of blood-red down its mouth, and Jason’s lip curls back, the fury in his gut stoked at the sight of the beast. 

His hand shakes on the crossbow for a brief moment, before he inhales deep through his nose and focuses to a razor point. Lets his gaze skim the ruffle of wings over its back, coiled and waiting. It’s formidable in size, elegant in its lethality, but Jason knows better than any man the sort of wretched havoc that creature can cause in flight. Knows deep in his gut, wrapped like a noose around his chest that tugs tighter with every agitated sweep that savage makes over the water. Then it raises its head, a single crimson eye flashing in the stagnant light. 

For a moment, Jason’s fifteen again, gripped with paralysing fear. He can feel the splinters in his palms, feel the ruptured carriage shifting beneath the claw and beat of an enormous winged beast. His breath is hard and flat in his lungs - not enough, too fast - and Jason can’t swallow past his pertification. 

There’s bellows around him, a cacophony of sound that’s swallowed entirely by the creak of the abused vessel that’s shattering, slowly and surely, around him. And those wingbeats thrum in his skull like a winter’s storm rips across barren fields, pervasive and malicious in their intensity. 

He can’t think, can’t _ move_, and Bruce’s hand is white around his bicep, his gravelly bark ricocheting in Jason’s stunned ears. He can’t make out the words, can barely hear them over the great black beast’s unwavering assault as the carriage jolts and tips and threatens to crack open, bare them to this skyward demon. 

There’s a frantic glean to Bruce’s eyes, but he’s moving so _ slow_, like the sands of time are running through treacle. The other prince, Jason’s betrothed, is tucked into Bruce’s side. His bright blue eyes are drowned in tears, his cheeks cleaved by their tracks as he shakes and sobs and screams, terrified beneath Bruce’s protective curl. 

“_Jason_,” Bruce is insisting, his tone hard and raw. Jason thinks maybe he’s scared. He’s never heard Bruce scared before. 

The carriage shifts, wood splitting beneath the rending of the creature’s talons, and Jason staggers back into the bench seat, fumbling for balance when the floor bucks. Bruce’s hand is bruising around his arm, and Jason numbly tries to focus on his words. 

“Take Timothy,” he instructs, and Jason’s gaze flickers down to the boy at his feet, forehead buried in his knees as he shakes and mewls. He looks _ hysterical_, and so very young, and the thought lodges hard and obtuse in Jason’s chest. “Jason, take Tim and _ get out of here_. Take him to his parents. Save yoursel-” 

Then the roof is rising, warping and cracking and _ splintering_. Jason glances up as those talons descend, sharp and curved and wickedly lethal as those wings beat and reform the sky above them. Jason can feel the force of the wind pinning him against the seat as Bruce tries to shield him, and he can’t _ breathe_. 

Tim’s scream rises to a shrill alarm as Bruce is ripped backwards and upwards, the carriage and the clearing suddenly bare around them as Jason’s hands curl around the timber. He tries to rise, reaching blankly for Tim. He takes his arm in much the same way Bruce had taken his, tugging him up against the younger boy’s protest. But Jason’s older, and stronger, and Tim is _ his _ responsibility now. 

That creature is circling again, Jason can _ hear _ it, and Jason clamps down on the realisation that it’s talons are empty, bare of Bruce- then he’s scrambling up, Tim in tow, and launching himself from the wreckage of the carriage. 

He shifts against the root, drilling his knee into the solidity of it, the certainty, to draw him out of the memory. Jason clenches his palms around the crossbow, and for the barest second, he can feel the soft give of a younger boy’s arm as it’s wrenched from him, and Jason opens his eyes. 

He layers himself against the foregrip, retribution coiling like the roots around him, firm and unwavering. Jason stares across the bank of the lake at the creature, the _ monster _ that killed his father - murdered Bruce and murdered young Timothy Drake before Jason even had a chance to properly meet his betrothed, threw both their kingdoms into disarray that Jason’s spent six long years rectifying, robbed of a guiding hand - and feels his resolve fortify. 

The clouds shift, the moon yawns wide, and the entire surface is illuminated in shreds of rippling silver. Jason can make out its form now, can discern the long arch of neck and the individual spines of the ebony feathers that paint its sides. As Jason watches, it settles its weight into the shimmering pool of the lake, arching upwards as it bares wings. It stretches up and out, as if it can embrace the moon, and the sheer size of it is enough to throw Jason’s tiny puddle of marsh into shadowed darkness. 

Jason grits his teeth, lets the trembling vengeance fill him, and adjusts his finger on the trigger. Lines up the sights of that perfectly lethal bolt with the scruff of feathers between the creature’s shoulders. Imagines what it will look like when the swan collapses into water, sinks like a stone back to the hell it clawed its way out of. 

Then Jason realises he doesn’t have to imagine, he can just _ take it_, and his finger curls. 

There’s a flash of liquid, silver light, so blinding that it fills the entire clearing, scouring the trees and stone white. Jason wrenches his head below the tangle of roots to shield it, heart leaping to his throat. When he peeks above, a frown etched into his brow, his heart sinks back to his stomach and lodges there. 

The swan curls, arching its throat back as if in horrid pain, a voiceless scream tearing through its lips. Its wings beat once, stretching out until the very tips of its remiges are trembling from the tension, and then it jolts violently, like a strike of lightning has coursed through it. That light expands, the white burning into Jason’s shielded retinas, and when he next blinks, there’s a man standing in the lake. 

Jason stares, jaw slack and crossbow lulling in his grip. 

The man folds forward onto his knees in the shallows and wails. 

The sound of it startles Jason, and he jerks back from his crouch, finger slipping. The bolt releases, flying wide and burying itself a few yards shy of the man as Jason slips in the mud. He catches himself with a curse, twisting his ankle in the exposed roots, and glances back up to find the man has spun to face him. 

There’s tear tracks on his cheeks, though he’s not crying now, and those huge, startled blue eyes are fixed on him. Jason would know that blue anywhere. That’s a blue he could fall into, deeper and more turbulent than the lake behind the shivering man. 

The name rises to Jason’s lips as he straightens, the man’s gaze following him up. “Tim?” 

His expression freezes, suspended in disbelief for the barest second, and then it folds into sharp relief. He staggers towards Jason as he flings himself over the log, water cascading around him as he throws himself into Jason’s chest. 

The wind goes out of him, and Jason only manages to keep his footing because he braces at the last second. That head of ink-black hair buries itself against Jason’s collarbone, and then there are hands on his shoulder blades, on his spine, pressing, _ clinging _ to him. 

Jason’s hands are numb and trembling when he brings them up to cup the back of the man’s neck, half-certain he’ll disintegrate into a fog as soon as he touches him. But that pale skin is hot and flushed beneath his palm, and the instant he realises it’s Tim, it’s actually _ Tim_, Jason’s fingers burrow into his hair and drag him impossibly closer. 

Tim makes a choked, bitten-off sob against him, and Jason feels his shoulders heave with it, though the sound never reaches him. Tim’s shaking like a leaf, soaked through and trembling, and Jason folds them both down to the shore because he’s not sure he can stay standing much longer himself. 

“You’re alive,” Jason whispers, voice raw and stunned, and Tim whines like he hasn’t heard another person’s voice in years. Jason has the sudden, horrifying thought that perhaps he hasn’t. So he tightens his grip around Tim’s shoulders and repeats with fortitude this time, “You’re alive, Tim.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, lieblings! We're kicking off the JayTimBingo2019 challenge with a Swan Princess AU!
> 
> For those of you who haven't seen the 1994 film, you should. The animation, themes and songs are amazing. But if you can't, the premise is essentially a prince and princess are betrothed to marry from a young age and are forced to spend every summer together, but they despise one another. Until they meet again as young adults and realise they love each other. But then the princess and her father are attacked by a 'Great Animal', the king killed and the princess vanishes without a trace, presumed dead. As his last words, the king warns the betrothed prince to "Beware the Great Animal; it is not as it seems". The prince spends years searching for the Great Animal, who he realises is a sorcerer who can change his appearance at will, until he stumbles across a beautiful swan. Convinced this is the Great Animal in disguise, he prepares to kill it but is thwarted at the last minute, where it is revealed the swan is actually the princess, cursed by the sorcerer to spend her days as a swan and return as a human by night. 
> 
> So here's a tasty morsel. This will be the first of five, which release over the rest of the week. I'm historically bad at short stories - the word counts always run away from me. So I'm using this challenge as a way to improve my writing skills. If anyone feels compelled to flesh this out further, please _please_ tag me so I can see your awesome work!


	2. Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of drabbles and short stories for the [JayTimWeek](https://jaytimweek.tumblr.com) Bingo Challenge 2019.  
Prompt: "Fate" - Minotaur & The Labyrinth AU

Tim wakes with his bare chest pressed to the grit and grime of the floor. His arms are pinned beneath the weight of his ribs, so Tim rolls off them and groans at the spike of pain that shoots up the blood-lacking limbs. His bleat echoes ominously in the darkness, and Tim stills. 

None of the shadows move. Nothing shifts in the gloom, and Tim cautiously pushes up to his knees, sits back on his crooked legs to inspect his wrists. 

He can’t see awfully well in this dim light, but he can fumble his way around the knot well enough to loosen the twine. He picks apart the ropes while he waits for his eyesight to adjust, aware that his soft exhalations are too-loud in the narrow space. 

There’s an impermeability to the shadows, a weight to the darkness that presses on his eyes and doesn’t alleviate. Nothing forms from the gloom, and by the time Tim has the rope neatly hooked into his chiton, he’s forfeited any hope of seeing down here. 

_ Is it really down? _he wonders absently as he pushes upright and presses a hand into the coarse hewn stone of the nearest wall. Nausea rolls over him, and Tim sucks in a sharp breath, forcing himself to calm. 

He can get out of here, he can. And they told him, if he can navigate his way out, he’ll have earnt his emancipation. 

_ Out, _ Tim thinks with a rueful twist of his lips, _ as if that were discernible_. He starts shuffling forwards, acutely aware of the soft pad of his bare feet on the cold tile underfoot, at how every shift echoes back at him like a cacophony. Logically, he’s aware that he’s almost silent, that he would be unnoticeable but for the narrow passageways and unforgiving stone singing his own movements back at him. And being unnoticed truly is the goal here, isn’t it? 

He keeps one hand to the wall as he walks, lets his callouses trail along the stone, lets his estimation of where the path lays guide him forwards. He can’t see anything in this darkness, is only aware that he’s turning corners and transversing passageways by the marked shift of the walls. But he knows vaguely that there has to be an out. That’s the thing about labyrinths; trace one course long enough and eventually you’ll stumble upon an exit. 

He’d been told as much by the jailors who had bound his wrists. The caretaker of the labyrinth had chuckled down at Tim’s impassive scowl, seized his chin and turned him to and fro beneath the flickering light of a torch. Told him that he was a pretty, delicate thing, and that he’d hoped Tim would find his way out of the labyrinth. Offered him a warm place in his bedchambers if he managed the impossible feat. 

Tim hadn’t been fazed by the guffaws that had followed, had merely sat and gleaned as much information as he could from the unyielding sandstone as the wagon had descended into the belly of the Minoan palace. He’d stayed quiet and pliant up until one of his jailors had produced a cup of crushed and boiled leaves from a small chest. 

Tim had been paraded through enough Ephesian bazaars to recognise the pungent scent of Mariam’s weed. And even though they’d bound his wrists in the abrasive twine, they’d still had to cradle him back against one guard’s chest while another forced his jaw open far enough to tip the sedative in. He’d thrashed hard enough that the legs locked around his hips and thighs had begun to cut off his blood flow before the concoction had settled neatly into his nervous system, and Tim had tasted darkness on his tongue before they’d even slid out of the moon’s sentry. 

He can still feel some of the sluggish after-effects in his limbs, feel the sink and tug of tiny, minute hooks into his muscles. It churns through his empty stomach. Tim clutches his midsection in an attempt to soothe his roiling gut, but abandons it when it doesn’t alleviate after a few moments. It’s only partially due to the drug, anyway. 

In the darkness, with only the buzz and churn of his own thoughts to keep him company, Tim can admit to himself that he’s _ scared_. Not of the abyss that stretches unconfined ahead of him, intangible and uncontainable in its unknowing. Not even of the stagnant silence that presses on his eardrums like a vice of metal wrapped around his skull, wound tighter and tighter under the composer’s unyielding hand. There’s a force behind the darkness and the quiet, a presence felt more in the pores of his lungs than in the hairs that stand to attention on the back of his neck. 

Tim knows he’s not alone. Hopes, prays that he is. But knows, deep in the instinctual churn of his gut, that he’s not. 

It doesn’t feel like a hunt. Tim’s been hunted before, stumbled over the crags of sand-dunes beneath the twinkle of a twilight sky with his breaths searing in his lungs and the sounds of a slaver on his heels. He’s felt the kind of fear that wraps itself around your bones like shackles and squeezes until all of you is thrumming with the ache of it. 

Tim isn’t being hunted now, in the soft and the silent. He’s not even certain that his hunter is _ behind _ him, and there’s a special terror in the thought that he could be unwittingly offering himself into the gaping maw of his shadowed predator. 

He thinks he hears it, once or twice. The sharp, staccato click that reverberates down the passageways, but dies by the time Tim’s spun to address it. It’s a scratching sort of insanity, the not knowing; it peels his calm away in lean strips, bearing down on his resolve with unwavering inevitability. 

Tim lifts his spare hand, slots his nails into the curve and line of the brand on his chest, digs hard. It’s not fresh, but it hasn’t finished scabbing yet. He’d received it when he’d reached the Cretan port, practically been dropped from the bow of a slaver’s vessel onto the merchant’s brand before being shuffled off to market. He’d fallen under the eye of cityguard, been collected as tax for the slaver’s transport. 

He’d thought he was going to be put to use in the prisons, cleaning stalls and maintaining the armoury beneath the eye of a disciplined warden. It wasn’t until he’d asked where he was to sleep that his jailors had laughed and told him he wouldn’t live long enough to see a bedroll. 

They hadn’t been sparing on his fate. Knossos kept to archaic customs, but they kept to them rigorously. They were famous for their superstitions; tales of their monthly sacrifices spread far across the Aegean, far enough that Tim had known his purpose from the first utterance of ‘labyrinth’ on the caretaker’s lips. 

It wasn’t much of a fate. His role was simple; he was a gift to the beast that inhabited the labyrinth, an offering of flesh and blood to sate the monster that threatened to shake the foundations of Crete until it shattered. The ancients had only lapsed in their offering once. Their descendant’s hubris wasn’t great enough to shirk the superstition. 

The brand stings beneath the press of his nails, agitated and young, but it grounds him. Drags his pulse back into a sensible pace. He keeps at it until he feels the warm wet coalescing beneath his nails, and then he pulls back to inspect the liquid. 

He can’t see it. Tim wonders absently if the beast could smell it on him. The thought makes his knees knock, and he presses onwards with a strained fervour. 

He doesn’t know how long he walks. Hours have no grasp down here, where time is swallowed by the void. Tim walks until his calves cave and he goes to the hard, unrelenting tiles on his hands and knees, lungs heaving. 

He’s loud, too loud in such a confined space, but Tim can’t summon the energy to drag himself further, so he twists and leans his bare back up against the wall. Curls his hands into fists at his sides, and waits out his inevitable fate. 

He might slumber, he can’t say for sure. The border of wakefulness and sleep muddies and blurs down in the labyrinth, intangible and marked only by the calming of his stomach. Hunger doesn’t come, and neither does thirst, but when Tim pulls back the sweep of his lashes, he’s aware that he’s no longer alone. 

His predator has no form. Tim can’t discern it from the pitch, but its presence is unbearable. It’s a monstrous thing that fills the air of the corridor, high above and around Tim, and he chokes on a cry of dismay that shrivels in his throat and dies. 

He can feel it _ move_. Almost hear the shift of muscle as it crouches to his height - but not his height, only an approximation, because Tim’s aware that it’s at least thrice his width and twice as tall. He can tell by the warmth that radiates from the beast, thickening the air around him as he sucks in a sharp breath and presses back against the unrelenting wall. 

He digs deep into his lungs for a plea, a treaty that he can offer this beast in exchange for his life. Nothing rises from the murkiness of his terror, and Tim’s throat tightens into a mute knot. 

It’s breathing. Tim can hear the gentle heave and sigh of its lungs, feel the wash of sickly warm air over his bare torso. Imagines what his blood must taste like, wonders if it lingers on the tip of the beast’s tongue, an alluring scent. 

The beast doesn’t reach for him, and for a few moments, Tim wonders if he’s already dead. If the moment had passed him while he wasn’t paying attention, and if this darkness is all that’s left for him now. 

He must stretch his fingers out, because in the second between the last and the next, there’s coarse fur pressed against his palm. Tim whines around an exhale. He can’t think around the permeating terror, but Tim pushes forward regardless, wraps his fingers around the thick strands, as if to be sure that they’re very truly there. 

The monster still doesn’t move, and after a minute suspended on the precipice of horror and awe, Tim rolls forward to his knees and slides his palm up the firm muscle of a thigh. The fur parts around his gliding touch, and he jerks to a halt when it disappears altogether. The smooth, unblemished heat of skin presses back against his palm, and Tim stills in the darkness, stunned. 

They have a word for the monster that roams the labyrinth. It rises to the forefront of Tim’s mind and sinks just as swiftly, curled back down to the depths like a wave across a sandbank. The memory of it lingers though, and Tim exhales shakily. 

_ Minotaur_. Half-man, half-bull. Not enough of either to earn the pity of the Gods. Confined to the depths of a lightless maze for eternity. Sated on the pleas and prayers of a hundred sacrifices. 

Tim’s hand moves of its own accord, trembling up the soft skin of the beast’s stomach, nails scraping higher over the curve of midsection until they catch on a fissure. He stills, retreating the barest inch to trace the undulation of an upraised scar, follow its path over the creature’s ribs and over its chest. There, Tim pauses in a high kneel, palm flat to the creature’s skin. The flesh swelling and falling beneath his touch, the bellow of lungs expanding around a slow, even breath. He wonders how many scars the beast has, how many desperate knives have been taken to its flesh over the centuries it’s spent down here. Whether it even knows what a century feels like, drowning in the sands of time. 

“You’re trapped here too,” he whispers softly, the rasp trickling from his lips into the almost-quiet of the corridor. The chest rises and falls under his touch, the wash of warm air tickling over Tim’s exposed neck. Close, so close. Tim drags in a shuddering breath and traces up to the base of a broad throat. 

A firm jaw, a chin, and then the soft press of lips back against his fingertips, parting slightly beneath their touch. Tim’s thumb lingers as he stretches his fingers out across the beast’s cheek, drawing the features from the darkness with his touch. 

There’s another scar here too. _ A brand_, Tim corrects with a start, seared into the creature’s cheekbone. The mark of Kappa, of livestock, and Tim flinches with the realisation. His own hand falls to his chest, to the inset of burnt flesh, the simplistic signia of Rithymna’s port. 

Fingers join his own, larger and more delicate. Hesitant as they slide up the arch of his collarbone, a thumb and a nail scraping gently against the coarseness of the brand. Tim holds his breath, stilling beneath the touch, a pulse beating steadily back against his own thumb, braced on the beast’s cheek. 

“You’re as trapped as I am,” Tim murmurs, grimacing as his voice rings overloud in the silence. A responding hum thrums up through his palm, those lips shifting under his thumb. 

“You’re scared,” the beast says in a low hum that rattles through Tim’s stiff chest. There’s sincerity in its sadness. It sounds... sympathetic. 

Tim has the vague sense that he’s hallucinating. It’s entirely possible, between the drug and the cloying pitch darkness eating into his sanity. But… what does it matter? What else does he have down here but what his mind can conjure? 

“I’m-” Tim says, and swallows against his dry throat. He wants to say something, many things. What pries itself from his lips instead is, “Tim.” 

“Iason,” the beast replies, and Tim’s throat swells around a choked laugh. 

“You have a name,” he says mildly. Beneath his hand, the cheek shifts, dipping and rising again - a nod. 

“As do you,” the beast replies. 

“How long-?” Tim begins, and hesitates around the rest of the question. He doesn’t know what he’s asking, is even less certain he wants the answer. 

The beast exhales, sliding down to its knees, and Tim’s heart beats a frantic pace behind the nock of his throat. Even without sight, Tim can tell their gazes are not level, so he cants his grip, trailing fingers up over the beast’s temple. He feels when the creature leans into his touch, a low, yearning hum parting from behind its teeth, and Tim wraps his palm around the minotaur’s horn. 

It stills then, rigid beneath his grip. Tim burrows his fingers into the tufts of hair around its crown. Circles aimlessly over the beast’s patient stare. 

“Tell me where you come from,” the beast implores. “Tell me what you’ve seen.” 

“Why?” Tim asks. 

“Because someone ought to remember you, little bird.” 

“My name…” Tim says, a wave of dread rolling up through him. He flexes his grip around the horn as it crests, but then it dissipates to calm, and he slumps slightly. 

“Tell me,” Iason says after a long moment broken only by the heave of their chests. “I’ll remember you.” 

“Timotheos,” Tim whispers, and can taste the salt of his own tears. 

A thumb brushes over his cheek, sliding around to cup the back of his head, threaded through his hair. Tim’s hands sink to wrap around the beast’s waist, burying his face into the promising warmth of that steady chest. 

“I don’t want to die here,” he admits around a choked sob. 

“You won’t,” Iason answers solemnly. “You can’t die if you’re mourned.” 

Tim’s sob hitches, and he leans back to stare up into the pitch, feeling the beast’s eyes rove over his. 

“Tell me,” the minotaur implores again, and Tim’s lips part around his story. He weaves the threads of fate and past into the darkness around them, blanketing them in the tapestry until his voice is hoarse and his words are rasps that crest his lips and disintegrate. “Sleep,” Iason asks of him, and Tim sinks into the dark, lost to the labyrinth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, 'Timothy' and 'Jason' are both Greek-originating names.  
I visited Knossos on Crete a year ago, and was inspired by the myth of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Thought it made for an interesting tale. 
> 
> I didn't realise how hard it was to write a story without the benefit of sight! But I'm getting lots of practice with this challenge, really enjoying it. More to come!!


	3. Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of drabbles and short stories for the [JayTimWeek](https://jaytimweek.tumblr.com) Bingo Challenge 2019.  
Prompt: "Jealousy" - Fae!Tim & Irish!Jason

“Soft goes the shepherd in another man’s field,” a voice murmurs from behind him, gentle as the whisper of the grass. It travels across the empty meadow like a shot arrow, burying in his ear. Jason spins to find a man leaning against a fence, wrists hooked over the eerie white paling. 

Jason knows immediately that he isn’t human. There’s a fragility to him, a smeared glow at the edges of him, like Jason’s peering through a mirage. His hair parts down his crown, ink as pitch. It makes his overpale skin luminate in the broad light of the bare meadow. There’s something to his eyes too, speaking of youthful mischief and atavistic wisdom. His lips twist in a shrewd smile when Jason’s hands curl nervously at his sides. 

Jason frowns, his voice tumbling from between stunned lips. “I’m not here to commit a sin on another’s wife.” 

That smile widens, and while Jason can see that soft mouth is full of nothing but human teeth, the reminder does nothing to assuage his distrust. “Who says I have a wife?” he chirps with private amusement, and flicks a wrist to the ground beneath Jason’s boots. 

He glances down, mouth thinning at the ring of mushrooms scattered around him, the grass flattened and smooth within its perimeter. A coil of panic weaves up Jason’s spine, coaxed by ancestral instinct, but he clamps down on his resolve and meets the fae’s gaze. “This is your field.” 

“Still assure you’re not here for sinful purposes?” the fae chuckles, and Jason elects not to glorify that with an answer. 

“I’m here for a covenant,” Jason admits, and the fae perks at that, eyes shining. 

“What could a handsome, virile young shepherd possibly call upon my graces for?” the fae asks in a teasing purr, and even though Jason knows it’s steeped in masked derision, he blushes despite himself. 

The figure knits itself behind his brow, tones of azure blue and charcoal painting in his mind’s eye. The curl of a bright smile. The twinkle of a generous eye. “A man,” Jason croaks, and clears his throat. 

The fae’s head tilts ever-so-slightly, some of the hair falling to trace his cheekbone. His expression, while delicate and bare, is wholly unreadable. “What of a man?” 

Jason swallows, and twists his cap in his grip, taking solstice in the tangibility of it. “There’s a Romany man in the village. He sings to the children, dances for them. I…” The words curl and shrivel in Jason’s throat, and he swallows and tries again, “I want him to fall in love with me.” 

“Because you’ve fallen for him,” the fae discerns, the barest hint of jealousy painting his tone, and Jason stares, unable to bring himself to confirm the truth. The fae doesn’t seem to need the assurance, because he hums and laces his fingers together, dangling them in front of the fence. “And you want my covenant to ensure his fidelity?” 

Jason nods, a rush of guilt lighting him up from crown to toe. 

He wouldn’t wish a fae’s influence over anyone. The midnight meddlers are known for their love of irony, their trickery of the unwitting. And there’s a curse to be had in the bent of another’s will to the unyielding whim of the fae. Jason wouldn’t ever consider partaking in a covenant with one. 

Or, so he’d thought. Jason had never considered the allure of the faefolk until the Romany had wandered into his little village with a mouthful of sunlit laughter and wrapped Jason’s heart in his, sparking an unceasing ache in his chest. Jason hadn’t felt anything akin to the rush of heat that swamps him even now; his soul is bound to the new visitor. It’s only fair he be bound similar. 

The fae offers him a gleaming smile beneath the rosy silver of the moonlight, unfurling from his lean over the fence. He slides between the two beams with liquid grace, grass barely parting under his weight as he crosses the dew-soaked meadow. 

There’s an ethereality to him that halts the breath in Jason’s throat. He’s nearly intangible in the dim light, suring as he crosses the ring of mushrooms into the circle Jason’s frozen within. 

He stops within a yard of him, a head shorter and shimmering with beauty. Jason can’t tear his gaze away from that demure, wicked smile. His hands twist on his cap. 

“Lay,” the fae instructs, and when Jason doesn’t move, he steps forward and hooks his arms around Jason’s shoulders. Jason stiffens beneath the contact, close enough now to see the humour glinting in those fog-blue eyes. They drink him in in the space between them, and Jason finds himself folding down to the grass below. 

The dew is cold on his bare palms, and it seeps into his trousers with soft wet kisses as the fae slips into his lap, ankles loosely knotting in Jason’s lower back. 

“I need three traits to bind the person of your affections,” the fae explains, and Jason can feel the heat of him through his thin shirt. It makes cold tingle up his spine, his gaze falling to the fae’s lips as they quirk in a smile, and Jason realises he’s looking for an answer. 

His stomach is simmering with heat and wariness. He’s heard enough rumours of the faefolk to know their covenants rarely end amicably. But Jason knows he can’t hold a candle to the airy glow of his unrequited; he only wants to stoke the embers in the man’s soul, nothing more. All that comes from it will be natural, given gracefully and longingly received. Jason twists his fingers into the blades of grass and exhales as the fae’s hands shift to cup the back of his neck, nails tracking into his hairline. 

“Is this lover a traveller?” the fae asks, and Jason nods after a hesitant moment. He looks amused, and continues, “Dark of hair?” 

Jason frowns, but affirms again. 

The fae sighs fondly, forehead dipping until it nearly brushes his. _ Nearly_. 

“Does he have unwitting charm?” 

“Yes,” Jason murmurs, voice hoarse in the dark night. The fae’s lips curl in a broad grin at his vocalisation, and he leans forward to lick his way into Jason’s mouth, parting his lips with his insistent press. Jason lifts a hand to steady the slim creature, pliant beneath his touch as those fingers curl and pull at his hair. 

Something heated in Jason’s stomach lurches and pulls up through the breadth of him. 

The fae breaks off with a breathless sigh, eyes half-lidded as he surveys Jason. “Say for me,” he instructs, and waits until Jason has nodded to continue. Jason’s lungs bubble up into his throat, caught in the grip of some unseen force, but he opens his mouth and pledges, 

_ “May my heart ne'er be torn asunder, _

_ May my heels ne'er touch the ground, _

_ Lips to taste of true love's skin, _

_ And rings of gold be bound, _

_ Let his bod fore'er yearn for me, _

_ Let him wax and wane and ache, _

_ For his soul to be affixed to mine, _

_ This vow I steadfast take:” _

Jason’s gaze flickers between the fae’s, transfixed. He can see into the very nebulae of his irises, deeper than the pools of the dusk-night sky. The words roll off his lips like a Sunday prayer, and Jason’s blood pulses thick, honeyed in his veins. 

_ “I offer up myself for him, _

_ My vessel true and devout, _

_ And if 'nother love shall twixt mine, _

_ Let me be fore'er without.” _

The fae’s smile is sharp and wicked. Jason can feel it pressing at his throat when the creature leans down and mouths a line up his jaw. He shifts ever-so-slightly, pressing against the core of Jason, making his breath falter and the heat in him lurch. A soft tinkle of laughter slides into his ear, followed by the fae’s lips on the shell. 

“And when you look in his eyes,” he instructs, and pulls back to bare that knowing grin, “stir your resolve and bind him with the words:

_ 'Fore my eyes I see no other, _

_ Than my fairest, faith'd and true, _

_ Come take my arms and soft my heart, _

_ Dear'st love I yearn for you.” _

The last is whispered on the rise of Jason’s lower lip, the fae’s eyes melting into him, the heat spiralling up through Jason’s chest to meet it. It saturates him, searing up through his veins to set him alight. He feels too warm, his inhalations too short, and between one breath and the next, he swells upwards and seizes the fae’s lips. 

He takes the creature down into the grass, hair splaying around his dark crown as his heels sure in the arch of Jason’s spine and Jason’s hands chase the heat up through his ribs to his throat and then his jaw. He’s so small, so fragile and compelling beneath Jason’s huge hands. So Jason wraps them around the sides of his neck and burrows them into his hair, pouring himself into the fae. 

Jason jerks back when his head is starting to throb in beat with his pulse, sucking in a sharp lungful of chilled air. The fae slumps back into the grass, stunned and roused beneath Jason’s awe. There’s a want in that gaze, and Jason can’t help but rise to meet it, thumbs searing into the fae’s cheekbones as he cradles his face and whispers into the corner of his mouth. 

“‘Fore my eyes,” Jason murmurs, vision filled with the widening of the fae’s blue irises, “I see no other than my fairest, faith’d-” He rolls his weight down onto the fae, pinning him to the grass and smothering the heat in his veins with the proximity of him. “-and true. Come take my arms-” 

The fae whines, soft and pliant beneath the brush of Jason’s lips, and arches beneath his heat, body shivering in the grass as his mouth parts. 

“-and soft my heart-” 

Those hands jump to squeeze his wrists, the bones protesting as the fae stares up at him with an intensity that feels scalding. Jason can see a flicker of concern in those wide eyes, smothered by the roiling heat of his want, and he mouths the fae’s lips open with his own, whispering the words into the core of him. 

“Dear’st love I yearn for you.” 

When the heat has sated to a soothed simmer in Jason’s spine, and the chill of the wet grass has dried in the crooks of their elbows and the dips of their collarbones, Jason sprawls back and watches the stars. The ragged breaths of the fae beside him smooth to soft gasps, and then fade altogether while Jason swims in the low warmth of his veins. 

The fae stirs before he does, bending at the waist to curl over his hitched knees. Jason tilts his head to trace his gaze up the unblemished arch of exposed spine, watching the gooseflesh speckle and ripple across his shoulders. The fae curls tighter around the bundle of his shirt in his lap, expression unreadable behind that sweep of dark, mussed hair. 

Then he clears his throat so softly that Jason almost mistakes it for the creak of a nearby hawthorn. “I’ll honour your covenant,” he whispers, and Jason stills, blinking up at him. 

He pivots, glancing down at Jason’s silence over a shoulder dipped in liquid moonlight. There’s a guilty sheen to his gaze, and he fixes it on Jason’s lips when he’s incapable of meeting his eyes. 

“I shouldn’t- I did not intend to effect your pledge,” he admits softly, and turns away again. His words still filter down to Jason where he lays on the grass. There’s a quiet shame radiating from, but his shoulder hitch in a single laugh. “I was so certain I could bind you to me.” 

Jason reaches out to trace the curve of the fae’s hipbone with his fingertips, and the man stiffens beneath the touch, but doesn’t turn around. “And didn’t you?” 

“I did,” the fae murmurs, and Jason shifts to sit up, nuzzling into the crook of his neck. 

He mouths along the fae’s rigid collarbone, feeling the sigh that swells to catch in his lungs. When Jason glances up through his lashes, the fae’s brow is knitted in hesitance and a blatant plea. The creature tips his head back, a groan trembling up his throat when Jason shifts to trace its ascent with his teeth. 

The fae’s eyes roll open like the sun rolls over the horizon, languid and reluctant. “I won’t hold you to it,” he promises, and Jason can feel the heat seeping from his pores, cooling in the wake of the fae’s words. “I won’t bind you to me.” 

Jason dips his fingers under the fae’s hand, tickling up his palm to circle the fae’s wrist. He doesn’t part from the man’s throat when he asks, “I don’t get a choice?” 

“I deceived you,” the fae replies in a hollow tone, shuddering beneath his ministrations. He doesn’t shift to pry Jason away, and Jason kisses up the pane of his jaw. “Your influence was overborne by my own covenant; your affections weren’t true. I won’t bind you by a false covenant.” 

“Do my affections seem false to you?” Jason asks, timbre rumbling in his throat, soft as the grass under them. The fae shudders, coils tighter and then slumps into the line of Jason’s side with a dejected laugh. 

“You don’t even know my name,” the fae says, and Jason feels a prickle at the back of his neck. It sounds like the warning words of his grandmother in his ears, pressing tight and wary against his skull. 

“Nor you mine,” Jason allows, and the fae doesn’t respond for a long minute. 

“Timothy,” he offers, his breath fanning into Jason’s hairline. “I go by Timothy.” 

Jason hums and layers his teeth against the side of the fae’s throat, hearing and feeling the pressed whine that vibrates up through it when he arches against Jason, brow knitting. 

“Thank you,” Jason murmurs sincerely, pressing a kiss to the fae’s closed eyelid, then the other. “For dissolving your covenant over me. But I have no intention of revoking mine, Timothy.” 

The fae’s eyes slide open, searching Jason’s expression as he hovers over him. Those blue eyes pinch and then flatten, heat pooling in their depths. He tilts back against Jason, fingers curling as he bows against his frame. Jason can feel the tug of the tendons beneath the grip on his wrist. 

“Affixed,” the fae promises softly, baring his throat to Jason’s soft kiss. A laugh bubbles back against Jason’s lips. “Oh, how I yearn and ache,” he teases, but it’s resigned, haunted, and Jason pulls back to meet his gaze. 

“And dear’st I yearn for you,” Jason reminds him, and gets to watch the stars blossom in his eyes, bright and hopeful. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Them: "A traveller, dark of hair and possessing unwitting charm"  
Me, staring into the camera like The Office: Gosh gee, I wonder who that could be. 
> 
> Hell fucking yeah! Now we're getting into the swing of it!  
Who doesn't like a good ol' Fae!Tim? 
> 
> **Edit 08/13/19:** So, I got overcommitted with work and extra curriculars, and life in general. So I'm gonna shove these last two prompts onto the backburner so I can focus on catching up on Soulmate Week. I'll come back to post them a little later, because I'm super invested in Chapter 5's prompt. Keep an eye out, they will pop up eventually.


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